Des O'Driscoll: Corcadorca's Disco Pigs stands as one of Cork's cultural moments

This was a play that plugged into the energy of the city in which it was born and was close to a life-changing experience

Eileen Walsh and Cillian Murphy in Disco Pigs.

Disco Pigs. Triskel Arts Centre. 1996. Looking at the key cultural moments in Cork of the latter half of the 20th century, it’s up there with the best of them. The Rolling Stones at the Savoy, Rory Gallagher at the City Hall, Nirvana at Sir Henrys… Cillian Murphy and Eileen Walsh in Enda Walsh’s new play. It really was that big.

For those of us lucky enough to be in that small dark room on Tobin Street, it wasn’t just a Ground Zero in terms of our consumption of culture. This was close to a life-changing experience. 

Up until then, theatre for most of us had either been the Shakespeare we had been forced to do in school, or the plays of O’Casey or Synge that felt more like history lessons. Even the more contemporary stuff was fine for Cork’s self-styled arty cohort. Not us. Disco Pigs and Corcadorca changed all that.

This was a play that plugged into the energy of the city in which it was born. The language Pig and Runt spoke was ours, albeit twisted with a few Clockwork Orange-isms. 

We knew the characters who loved buzzing around town, cornering people in pubs, getting choked-up talking about Sonia O’Sullivan (‘Champion da Wonderhorse’) or the local sons then starring for Manchester United. Cork is great, like.

It took the outsider’s eye of Kilbarrack-born writer Enda Walsh to actually show us the city we knew and loved. 

And to turn something so Leeside and local into an offering that could be related to around the world, as rave reviews and packed houses became commonplace in foreign cities such as London, Melbourne and Dublin.

You’d have to presume there was some divine intervention at work to bring his quirky perspective together with the acting talents of Murphy and Walsh. Or maybe that was down to Pat Kiernan, the Disco Pigs director who went on to establish Corcadorca as one of the country’s leading theatre companies.

Not everything they did hit the heights of that first major offering, but the 31-year history of Corcadorca is littered with impressive shows. Their specialty became the site-specific promenade performances where all the world really did become a stage.

The gathering before the show was half the buzz. A cooperage off the North Mall, a warehouse near the Marina, the jetty for a ferry to one of the harbour islands… already you felt this wasn’t going to be an ordinary theatre experience.

As well as its own productions through the years, Corcadorca had a major hand in fostering local talent through its base at the Theatre Development Centre at Triskel. 

In particular the SHOW event every year would give theatre-makers a chance to present works-in-progress, with advice and guidance from Kiernan. Who knows what seeds were planted in the fostering of such emerging talents?

As we digest the news that Corcadorca is no more, at least we can hope that somewhere along the way, they’ve inspired someone to produce a new generation’s Disco Pigs.